Style.com Magazine Details Revealed, Do You Want to Read It?

When news spread earlier this year that online fashion pioneer Style.com would soon launch a print edition, we were curious but also confused about how exactly the site, best known for the breadth and depth of its runway photos, would translate its digital appeal into something more permanent. We imagined something similar to the enormously successful Elle Collections magazine, a biannual spinoff of Elle UK which both edits and plays with runway looks and accessories in a playful and educational way for fashionable consumers.

This week, plans for the “magazine for fashion obsessives by fashion obsessives” have finally been revealed by Style.com Editor-in-Chief Dirk Standen in an interview with The Business of Fashion. Out in late October, the publication aims to “uncover the most intriguing people, places, and clothes of the season…chart the highs and lows, the triumphs and setbacks, the public and private moments on the journey from New York to Paris, catwalk to sidewalk, backstage to after-party” of the Spring 2012 season.

The magazine hopes to distinguish itself from competing fashion magazines but offering “emotional narrative storytelling” to complement the Fashion Week reportage already offered by the site, focusing on the process of the “intense four week cycle” that is fashion month, as well as its impact and rituals. According to Standen, the magazine will also be part of the site’s tentative foray into e-commerce, entitled “Instant Gratification,” by promoting selected items from six New York runways that will also be sold to readers just weeks (instead of months) after NYFW ends.

And why is this project happening now? Stanton says that he doesn’t think “brands can afford to be tied to one medium anymore […] even on the web, it’s not enough to just have a website. You have to be on various digital devices. You need to be on the various social media sites. You want your content to be available in as many places as possible.”